Hillary Clinton’s Mixed Record on Wall Street Belies Her Tough ‘Cut it Out’ Talk
As a U.S. senator during the crisis years, Clinton’s legislative proposals to reform banking and housing finance didn’t gain traction.
An examination of her remarks to Wall Street in December 2007 and Clinton’s actions as a senator — a period when she had the best opportunity to translate her words into deeds — presents a more mixed picture of her record on the banking industry.
Clinton steered a middle ground in a 28-minute address to business executives gathered at an office of the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York’s Times Square on Dec. 5, 2007. In the event, she presented a detailed analysis of the burgeoning dangers in the housing market and its threat to the economy. (ProPublica obtained a video of the speech, which hasn’t previously been posted.)
Clinton gave a shout-out to her “wonderful donors” in the audience, and asked the bankers to voluntarily suspend foreclosures and freeze interest rates on adjustable subprime mortgages. She praised Wall Street for its role in creating the nation’s wealth, then added that “too many American families are not sharing” in that prosperity.
She said the brewing economic troubles weren’t mainly the fault of banks, “not by a long shot,” but added they needed to shoulder responsibility for their role. While there was plenty of blame to go around for the spate of reckless lending, and while Wall Street may not have created the foreclosure crisis, it “certainly had a hand in making it worse” and “needs to help us solve it.”
http://www.propublica.org/article/hillary-clinton-mixed-record-on-wall-street-tough-cut-it-out-talk
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